


the difference between me and them

by CloudDreamer



Series: through the looking glass [4]
Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Dark Seattle, Implied/Referenced Cannibalism, Past Body Control, Prosthesis, Seattle Garages (Blaseball Team), i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28907145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: the first shot in a war, and it's to take back their other halves.to take back hands for holding and mouths to speak or scream the truth.
Relationships: Jaylen Hotdogfingers & Mike Townsend
Series: through the looking glass [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2144031
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14





	the difference between me and them

The gum has been cleared. The way is open, not to be shut again until they have what they came here for— who they came here for. They do not have the power of gods at their back. They have nothing but their own will, but that will is something mighty. Goodwin Morin is their guide, a navigator to guide them through treacherous waters. 

The DEBT Tower rises above the city. The Seattle Garages and their allies take to the streets for an opening assault in a war long since overdue. 

But this is not that story. 

The door slides open. It tried to seal shut when it registered a foreign entity not allowed backdoor access by the higher ups, all of the doors in this building did, but there is little that can stop a determined Math Velaquez. Everyone who might’ve noticed the locks, both external and internal, being switched off should be a little preoccupied, as of now, though she’s not taking that as any sort of reassurance.

Jaylen steps through to see herself. 

No, not herself. She can’t think like that. 

The two women have much in common. They share a slender but heavy build, thick curly hair that always wants to lean one way or another, and warm brown skin that the sun clings too. A thin white line crosses both of their lips, a scar that invites questions, even as it’s mostly faded over the years. They are both sturdy on their feet, and they both hold their hands as if they could lose control of them at any moment. 

Jaylen’s arms haven’t been her own for a long time. They are weapons, plain and simple, and she always assumes they are ready to strike. She weighs every motion of them in her mind, sure there’s some trap to them that might activate at any moment. They are hers, in flesh, but in spirit, they are in service of something greater. Something that burns behind her dark brown eyes, deep and violent. Unknowable, ancient. And though she does her best to separate out the two, there is rage there that is all her own and sometimes she doesn’t know where Jaylen Hotdogfingers ends and where the Debted begins. 

She does not shake with the weight of it all, not anymore, but she is perpetually grim, a darkness following her that she does not know how to shake. Sometimes she wonders if she has ever escaped the pressure of the Trench or if it’s simply tagged along behind her. Tattoos cross her body, marks of her shame and pride alike, but nothing of hers adorns the arms. Only names, across the back of each wrist. 

This woman, who shares her likeness and her name, is nothing like her. Her smile is wide and no ink mars her face, up and down her neck, or the little of her arms that remain. There is perfection in everything she does, even as she’s drained of the color that Jaylen can’t seem to escape. Even that scar seems to be part of a perfect whole, something that Jaylen could never compete with.

Her fingers are made of metal, but that is not what marks them as not hers in a similar but completely different way than Jaylen’s fingers aren’t her own. She knows metal hands, knows metal legs, knows metal bodies, and she knows when they belong. She can see who has made them their own, and this woman does not understand these to be an extension of her will. They are plain, serviceable, with a corporate name stenciled across them. There are no stickers, no colors, nothing to make them hers. Because they are not, and that is clear in the eyes behind the smile, because those are dark too. This woman is in light, but she knows the shadows as Jaylen knows the heart of the flame, of the crushing pressure of water above her. 

“Hello! What may I do for you?” the woman that is not Jaylen, has never been Jaylen, and will always be Jaylen says. Her smile is wide, with teeth, and it doesn’t reach her eyes. 

“Um,” Jaylen begins. She knows what she’s supposed to say. She had a whole speech planned, she’s pretty sure, but it’s gone now. It’s gone, and all she can see are hands posed so delicately on the sides of a black swivel chair. Simple, functional. Mundane. This woman has turned away from a monitor, pushing the chair with just her feet, as not to disturb the offending limbs. It is simple and functional as well, keys worn down from years of pressing them. The spreadsheet that is still up behind her is filled with endless strings of numbers and words that Jaylen doesn’t want to read. She knows she will see something horrifying. “You’re… You’re Jaylen Hotdogfingers, right?”

“Why yes!” She says, still beaming, and it’s as fucking blinding as the sun. Does she not see their faces, how perfectly they match? How their voices are shallow echoes of each other? “Proud progenitor of the Hotdogfingersfingers! They are normal hotdogs, trust us, they really are!” 

Jaylen swallows the acid in the back of her throat, and she blinks away whatever’s making her eyes blurry. Mike warned her. He’d said there was so much wrong with this place. He’d said she didn’t need to come, that anyone could do it, but she’d needed to know. She’d needed to know what he’d sacrificed for her, those seasons spent alone in this damned place. But not alone. Not really. He’d had her. This woman in front of her. The one nobody but he had seen in decades. Whispers circulated, of course, in the circles Goodwin used to move in before she was banished to the same shadowy half existence that Mike had condemned himself to for Jaylen, circles that Mike had listened to from the edge of existence. He’d listened to everyone and everything, mapped so much of this place when the other Shadows had long since given up on changing things. He’d searched when the others had given up on even being seen by anyone but each other, and he’d found Jaylen, the only one of the Garages, past and present, without a known counterpart. 

And this Jaylen had seen him, against all the odds. 

To say Jaylen was jealous was insulting, both to her own relationship with Mike and to the sacrifice he had made for her. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel wrong, knowing that something had happened there. As much as their bond had been strong, it’d been one of good times and fresh starts. It’d been shitty songs sung for each other when they should’ve been studying and late nights filled with laughter. She’d burned, and he’d lived until he found a way to give that up for her. They still haven’t figured out how to exist in the context of fear. The soft memories of good times are so hard to connect to when the light of the Dark Seattle sun shines brighter than the flames that Jaylen’s pitches call down. Mike doesn’t know the monster that’s twisted bits and pieces of Jaylen’s body into weapons, and she doesn’t know the strong and scarred man that he’s grown into.

But she does. 

“Mike Townsend says hi,” she forces out, and her words are solid. Heavy in her throat, in her chest. They are good words for her to hear, words that should mean liberation, and yet, the other’s smile drops into something more neutral. Had Jaylen miscalculated? Had Mike? She takes a step back, as that Jaylen stands, taking a step forward. Fear of the woman who approaches and horror at what she knows must have happened here merge into something vile in her chest. 

That Jaylen nods sharply. She stops moving right in front of the door frame, reaching up tentatively with the arms that aren’t her own. About to reach out. Mike did not give specifics of her situation when he gave the report to the combined forces. He said that would be her story to tell, when and not if she was freed, but from the way she moves, Jaylen knows that she has not left this room in years. 

She knows because it is how she stood as she regained her footing in the Big Garage’s parking lot. It is the small inhalation. 

“Do you have any idea what’s going to happen when I try to leave?” she asks, lightly, as if it’s just another slogan churned out by the corporate machine. Jaylen shakes her head yes. Slight, in the same way this woman had nodded. Definitive. It's only a hunch, but the way she asks confirms Jaylen's suspicions. There's no way they would let her escape that easily. The security is not just in the armed guards, the locks on the inside and out, but inside her.

"Maybe," she says, reaching out to pat her other self on the back. "But… you know what you’ve gotta do anyway, don’t you?” 

“I do.”


End file.
